NOTE

As I continue to work on things away from this blog (which is a collection of Free-Time/Casual Online Writing, Remarks, And Notes By ME Whelan) and continue to figure out what goes and what stays of my existing online-writing, the de-emphasizing of one or another continues as well....

Thursday, February 25, 2016

"The OK-Ness Of People" - Another Blog I Forgot About

As
part of the cleaning-out, trimming down, consolidating, etc. etc. etc.
process, I found yet another forgotten blog. It is "The OK-Ness Of
People". Maybe I'll delete it. Maybe I'll re-think it (or at least the
subject/theme). In the meantime,I hate to waste what I found (and
wrote) on that particular blog.I'm posting the words from that blog below.

"The OK-Ness Of People"

People
- they come in different shapes and sizes, ages, and colors; and each
one of them has his or her own story. When it comes to a lot of things
about people, though, a good part of the time a whole lot of them are
very much the same. One thing all people have in common is that they
are, in fact, individuals.

Over the last couple of decades, it
seems as if our society has increasingly forgotten that people are
usually, for the most part, "OK". Sure, there are people who are damaged
and/or evil. Sure, there are people with physical and or mental
conditions (sometimes serious and farm from "OK", at least when it comes
to whether or not someone is physically or mentally healthy). Sure,
there are people who are unhappy, even downright miserable. There are
also people who are insecure or else more sure of themselves than they
really ought to be. In spite of all that, though, are generally OK when
it comes to "being a person".

What I mean by "OK" is whether or
not someone is a good person who cares about others, cares about being a
responsible person, wants a good life for himself and his children or
future children; and is, for the most part, a capable individual who
does, or strives to, manage himself and his own life with an average, or
better than average, degree of competence.

In the early 1970's
Thomas A Harris, MD, wrote the popular self-help book, "I'm OK. You're
OK." Although that book has nothing to do with this site, when I was
getting ready to make the statement I'm about to make about society, I
looked up the book (not only was it popular, but I read it when it was
"big", because I wanted to make a reference just to the title of the
book and need to look up the author's name and the date the book was
out.

The statement I was about to make about today's society, and
that prompted me to look up the author and date for that book was this:
"In the early 70's, a popular self-help book was 'I'm OK. You're OK.'
Aimed at helping people solve their problems by using a Transactional
Analysis approach, the book seemed to be one with which anyone who was
reader of the latest books, and/or a reader of the latest self-help
books at the time, was familiar. The words, "I'm OK. You're OK," became
kind of a cliche. In any case, my plan, before looking up the book, was
to say that while "I'm OK. You're OK," sometimes seemed to be a "big
theme" in 1970's American culture. The point I'd planned to make after
making the statement that prompted looking up the book, was that it
seems as if the "big theme" in today's culture is, "I'm OK. You're Not
OK," or else "I'm not OK. You're Not OK. Nobody is OK."

What I
discovered when I looked up the book is that the author actually made a
reference to "I'm OK. You're Not Ok." I thought it would reasonable and
appropriate here to mention that, even though; I've long forgotten what
was in the back and certainly didn't even have the book in mind when I
decided to name this site.

In any case, the point is that it, to
me, has become increasingly disturbing that our society/culture has
gotten to the point where it seems rare to run into someone who sees the
"OK-ness" of most people. Whether that's a matter of believing that
most people have a mental health condition, that most physical
conditions can't/won't improve, that people with plenty of money lack
character or integrity, that people with little money lack intelligence
or willingness to work hard; or whether it means that people who,
without intending to, "mess up" or fail in one way or another either
brought it on through their own inferiority or even malicious intent -
it all amounts to the same thing, which is assuming the worst about
who/what people are.

Being "OK", most of us want to see an end of
all the problems in our society. Being "OK", most of us want to solve
our own, individual, problems. To me, one of the biggest obstacles to
solving any number of problems insufficient understanding of the people
who have and/or create those problems. What's particularly disturbing to
me, as I think about whether or not some problems can ever be solved,
is that it looks to me as if our culture has moved farther and farther
away from truly understanding people, and continues to move in the same
direction. It just seems to me that someone has to start putting on the
brakes to the run-away train that has picked up steam over the last few
decades. I know I'm not alone in my observations (although I often feel
very much alone with those observations.) Alone or not (and again, I
really don't think I'm alone), I just think it's time for anyone who
noticed that the run-away train continues to pick up steam to start
saying/writing something new, maybe something old, something different,
something "common sense" - just something that's right and that makes
some solid sense to anyone who goes through this life as person; and
that is, of course, everyone.

Making sense to everyone" is, of
course, a very tall order that's unlikely to be fulfilled. Making sense
to more people, rather than not making sense to most people, is,
however, not that unrealistic an aim. Realistic or not, that's the aim
of this site.

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"Writing isn't always about just getting the words down, or out, or even read. It is about pulling from the universe just the right number and combination of words and allowing them to join hands to come to life."

Note I

As I continue to reorganize, trim down, consolidate, further develop, and/or otherwise work on any number of my own blogs/sites, there may be the occasional "No Page Exists" message on this blog. That's temporary and not something I can avoid at this stage in my reorganizing "project".

I've got my Google+ profile settings so that all but this blog and a couple of other things are hidden from the public. Because of that, but because I don't particularly want to keep some of my writing a big secret, I'm including a few links that will get anyone who may be at all interested to a page that is far less of an apparent dead end than my Google profile is right at this time. Here's one link:

In order to keep this "explanatory note" relatively brief, I'll write a post (February 21, 2016) to further make it clear what I'm doing with this blog. My plan is to revise and/or delete this note in the very near future, when it no longer seems necessary to include it (or parts of it).

Because I've transitioned from having once used a pen-name to (in more recent times) using my real name, I'm also including a link to my "pen-name blog".

"The Writing-Reorganizing Project Continues" is the title of the February 21, 2016 post, to which I referred above.

Note II

What's On This Blog

This blog, as its title suggests, is a collection of online writing and random notes/thoughts of its author. Since material posted on or before February 21, 2016 has been imported from a number of my other sites/blogs there's a little bit of clean-up that still needs to be done on those posts, particularly with regard to some formatting issues. I'll be working on improving the presentation of the older posts. There won't (or at least shouldn't) be any issues with material posted on or after the date mentioned here.

Note III

The following is a transfer from another one of my blogs/sites. It appears more attractively presented elsewhere, but I've chosen not to link to that because a) I don't want this blog to be a "dreaded" "doorway page", and b) I'm trying to "bury" (without completely deleting, at least for now) some of the sites where posts already appear. It know there are easier, more automated, ways to transfer material, but with a large variety and number of different types of material to be transferred, I've found that in some instances "more automated" means "further, even if relatively minor, complicating things". In other words, I have a real online mess on my hands. I don't want more of the same, which, for my purposes/aims, often means limiting the "automating".

For now, I'll mark transfer posts as such. (Oh, and way at the bottom of the blog there's a link to the latest incarnation of an old blog. The link is there for my own convenience as I work on things here Links on this sidebar are old stuff. I'll do something with links to new stuff some other time.)

.

OTHER WRITING

"Other Writing" is a post title (and label) I've used on two posts ("Other Writing A" and "Other Writing B") with links to a big mix of (what else) other writing I have that falls under the category of "free time" or "casual" online. There's also a third post related to other writing, and that describes what much of that "other writing" is and why I included the other-writing-related posts, all of which are dated February 24, 2016.

(In a nutshell, I want those links available on here but don't want to highlight them.)

ABOUT 'WORDCRAFTER"

If you've arrived here via my HubPages "WordCrafter09" profile or from any of my pen-name pages here's a link to a blog that I set up as I was making the transition from a long-time, well established, pen-name to using my own name. Until very recently I've linked from my "WordCrafter09" profile to the blog, but since I've made substantial progress with the transition I decided to de-emphasize that blog (while still making a link to it available - at least for awhile longer).

It's not so much "blog" as it is part dumping ground and part explanation. In any case, here's the link (for now, anyway...):